Sunday, June 7, 2009

Big Quilt or Little Quilt?

Sometimes it works the other way too. I had originally planned to make a LITTLE Orange Peel quilt for Remembering Adelia, but gosh darn it those appliquéd pieces were so much fun to stitch. I became obsessed with making the orange peels from my reproduction scraps—carried the 3-in background squares and the peels with me everywhere I went in case I had a few minutes here and there to sew. Before I knew it, I had made over 90 blocks to piece together into a larger quilt. I'm so glad I did too because the quilt turned out to be my favorite, after obsessing over the border for weeks, and it made it onto the cover of the book (publisher chooses cover design).

I didn't have a lot of experience with appliqué and I wanted to try to make it the way Adelia would have made it—without freezer paper or stitching down the pieces by machine. Just traced the shape, finger pressed the seam under, pinned and then needle turned the edge. It's not perfect, but then, neither are antique quilts if you look at them closely. Of course, the rest of the quilt was pieced by machine (I'm not nuts) and I found a wonderful, talented woman (Dawn) who machine quilted it for me with a simple stipple design.

There's one entry in Adelia's diary where she says she needed to get away from the little girls (her sisters) and ran off into the woods with her sewing and nobody knew where she was. Wonder if she was making an orange peel quilt??

Dear Kathleen, I came across your website and web shop today, and I'm so happy! I ordered the Adelea book right away, the Prairie Children book I already have in my shelf. I so look forward to follow your blog!Elin from Norway.

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I'm a quilt designer and author of six quilting books for Martingale. I love making small quilts with an antique look and find inspiration in quilts from the past and the women who made them.
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See more of my quilts, books and patterns at http://www.countrylanequilts.com/

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